It’s dark out. Sydney knows that they shouldn’t be walking alone, two seemingly defenseless girls in a shadowy alley off of Wilshire Boulevard. She’d probably even be scared, if they really were defenseless.

Still, she’s definitely blaming Ryan for this. If Sydney shakes her head at danger, then Ryan laughs in its face.

Sure enough, Sydney senses them long before she sees them, a pop of white noise at the fringe of her consciousness, and just before Ryan hears them: a group of men, young men by the way they laugh and jostle each other, walking in their direction. They’re still a couple blocks away, mere dark silhouettes, and they haven’t noticed the girls in their path yet, or Sydney is sure she would feel the sudden, laser-guided focus of their thoughts towards them.

“Ry.” Sydney shoots the other girl a look that saves her the trouble of saying in her head: can we not?

Ryan only grins.

Usually, they’re left alone. Sydney doesn’t have such a low opinion of the male species that she goes around expecting to be harassed, like Ryan does.

Tonight, however, when their path intersects with the group of men, Sydney feels all of that mental focus threaten to swallow them as the men spread out in an instinctual circle around them. A threatening circle.

After all, what could two girls hope to do against five men?

Reading the minds of men with the temerity to attack her usually leaves a bad taste in her mouth, so she rarely lets herself suffer through it, especially when it’s always the same, arrogant crap. There’s no way for her to hear groupthink, anyway, and even the most innocent individual thoughts can turn deadly under peer pressure.

“Hey, ladies, you going somewhere tonight?”

Ryan steps abruptly towards the speaker, hands balled into fists at her sides, while the group shifts menacingly and snickers. Sydney sighs.

“Somewhere that’s not your business, asshole,” Ryan says, tipping her chin up defiantly. She might look disdainful, but Sydney feels an undercurrent of enjoyment in the other girl; Ryan liked to pick fights, and she liked justifiable fights the best.

The snickering stops.

“What did you say to me, bitch?” the same man says, and Sydney feels the ring of men close a little more tightly around them. There’s surprise in his voice, mixed in with the affront, and in the minds of every man surrounding them; it’s likely no woman has ever spoken back to them the way Ryan has.

“Ryan,” Sydney warns. At least be gentle with them, she adds, and directs the thought so that it jabs itself purposefully into Ryan’s thick head. Her fists tighten at her sides so that the knuckles show white, and Sydney knows she’s heard.

“You heard me,” she says, moving even closer to the man, so abruptly that he nearly takes a step backwards, away from her, before checking himself. He wasn’t expecting to be challenged, to become the one threatened instead, and he falters for a split second before his bemused anger returns, quick and reckless.

“Listen, bitch—” He grabs for Ryan’s wrist, but she moves too quickly for him to have any hope of catching her; she seizes his arm instead, pulling his momentum towards her, then jabs the heel of her free hand straight up into his nose. It breaks with a sickening crunch, but Sydney is relieved to know that Ryan listened and held back, even if only a little; she has enough strength to jam the bones into his brain.

He staggers and crumples to the dirty pavement, and his friends seem to take a collective step back, cowed.

“What the fuck?!” he yells, tears streaming down his cheeks as he clutches his bloody nose. “What the fuck is wrong with you, you—”

“Do you feel better about yourself now, huh?” Ryan is nearly standing over him, her voice edging into shrill, and Sydney reels for a moment against the rage surging off her in waves. “Do you feel cool? Do you feel powerful, like a man? Does it make you feel good to pick on people weaker than you, shitstain?”

The rest of the men, Sydney knows, are too shocked—and scared—to intervene on behalf of their friend. Ryan doesn’t paint a very imposing picture, too short and skinny and decidedly feminine to look like she packs much of a punch, and they were looking for easy prey, just like they’d found all the times before.

“Well, you picked on the wrong bitch tonight,” she hisses, eyes wide and wild, then kicks him viciously in the gut, with enough force to push him onto his back; he wheezes and struggles to scramble away from her, still on hands and knees, and Sydney gets her first good look at his broken nose, mashed horribly against his face, stark red with blood and imminent bruising.

“You crazy bitch!” He finds his voice again when he’s out of her range, scrambling to his feet, nearly bent double. She lunges towards him, just as a threat, and he almost falls over again in his rush to get away.

“The rest of you want to try me out?” she taunts, arms spread, but by now the group of men is starting to recover, stepping cautiously away from her, the circle around them widening and falling apart. One of them helps steady the man she’d punched.

“Ry.” I think you made your point. Sydney puts a hand on her shoulder, tugging her imploringly away from the men, and is relieved when she exhales, a hiss of breath that rattles between her teeth, and complies.

They walk away in silence, leaving the group behind to recuperate, while Ryan shifts her shoulders restlessly and flexes her fingers; Sydney recognizes the bit-by-bit release of her anger, without having to read her mind. Sydney’s mouth twists into a wry smile.

“You know, he was probably really attached that nose,” she says mildly.

“I could’ve broken his dick instead,” Ryan hisses stormily, crossing her arms over her chest, and Sydney laughs, mostly at the pouting jut of Ryan’s bottom lip.

“He’s probably even more attached to his dick.”

Ryan scowls and stomps through the alley a little harder and insists, “I just hate assholes like that!” but Sydney just keeps laughing and pulling her best friend along.